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Comment by lsd5you | Hacker News Reader

Anyone notice the casual racism in the article (97% white men). Would she be ok bemoaning (inaccurately) the disproportion of Jews?

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Considering that one of the main points of the article was that academic philosophy was disconnected from the 'real world', the fact that the demographic spread within academic philosophy is so narrow and and out of whack with the world at large is probably fairly relevant.

It's curious that you see that as the racism of the author, rather than an indicator of racism within the field.

It’s the way it was written. A negative point then point out they’re white men to amplify the negativity.

I think she has some good points but seems to have a strong world view that is biasing the article away from her key points. Not that there is anything wrong with expressing your self this way but she does seem to have something against white men.

Would you say that a disproportion alone is an indication of racism? If so, would you expect every single metric to be a perfect 50/50 proportion or are we doomed to always be confined to - a bigger or smaller - discrimination, because we'll always deviate in some metrics?

Not necessarily, but for a field that concerns itself with drawing conclusions about the human condition, often relying on experiential evidence, something has certainly gone very wrong if so few women are part of it.

universities are some of the most left-leaning institutions out there. Attributing under-representation in academia to racism is a bit of a stretch.

Well if it's not racism, then what explains it? And what explains why the ratio of women to men gets significantly lower past Bachelor's level degrees in philosophy? I really don't think it's contentious to say that that there's a severe cultural exclusion within philosophy and the way it tends to be taught.

what do you propose is happening in these philosophy classes that is so racist and sexist to chase away all the women and ethnic minorities? It must be like an Ivy League frat house to go from 50/50 to 95/5 in gender representation.

It's a number of things: some of which the article explains. I think the two most important reasons are that there's a culture that often mistakes aggressive debate for good philosophy. Not that white men tend to have these traits, but the people with these traits tend to be white men. Secondly, your perception of how relevant, or how alien and detached current philosophical thought seems to be, is going to depend on where you sit yourself; someone with a privileged upbringing is going to be much more comfortable sitting through a course that treats injustice, for example, as an abstract concept.

so correct me if I'm wrong but the serious problem with racism and sexism in academic philosophy is that academics want to debate (which involves critiquing ideas) and that they want to discuss ideas and concepts rather than taking to the streets in protest or otherwise skipping the ideas and going straight to execution? I recognise I'm being a bit reductionist but you have to see these criticisms are insane.

[edit] or at least, to call them racist/sexist is insane. I can somewhat understand the latter criticism coming from the perspective of someone who wants to do something about injustice, but then why are you in academic philosophy? That isn't where real-world change happens, people like that would be better off getting involved in social activism, whether they continue working in academia or not.

It is of course more akin to anti-semitism. Which is in essence a resentment against a more successful and influential class of people.

To be sure in all of these divides there is some substance to both sides (otherwise there wouldn't be an issue, all racism would marginalised flat earth level nonsense).

Also there are big problems with your conclusion. Philosophy departments are going to be overwhelmingly left leaning, so shouldn't that be an environment that doesn't exclude? Unless we conclude that virtually all left wing positions are just posturing, or that the problem isn't racism.

Many people believe that you can't be racist against whites or sexist against men.

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